


The Secret Door

by eadburh



Category: The Boxcar Children - Gertrude Chandler Warner
Genre: F/M, Fae & Fairies, Sibling Incest, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21947629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eadburh/pseuds/eadburh
Summary: Jess wondered, as she often did about everything, how they would've felt if they'd been ordinary children.
Relationships: Henry Alden / Jessie Alden
Comments: 20
Kudos: 35
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merely/gifts).



> This fic is based on the 1924 edition of the first book ([here](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42796) at project Gutenberg), and ignores later canon. I've kept the names and place names from the 1924 version too, to avoid confusing myself, so Jessie is Jess/Jesse and their last name is Cordyce rather than Alden.
> 
> Pairing note: Jess and Henry are 12 and 13 through most of this story. The ship content consists mostly of codependence, and one scene of handholding. This is more properly a pre-ship fic, but I've labeled it thus because their relationship is central to the story.

The children weren’t sad when their father died. Violet would’ve tried to be sad if she hadn’t been so tired. She was the conscientious one. Benny was too young and cared more about the loss of his toy bear, which they’d left behind with the body. Henry had been angry with their father for too long to be sad. Another boy might’ve stayed angry after he was dead, or else made posthumous amends, but that wasn’t how Henry operated. Instead he immediately and heartily set upon the process of forgetting they’d ever had a father. It would fall to Jess, as usual, to be the keeper of their memories. 

Jess had already been sad for their father when their mother died the year before, so she didn’t feel the need to do it again now. She’d known then that he wouldn’t last long on his own. He’d held out through the funeral, and for a few months afterwards he’d tried to affect a pastiche of fatherly strength. As that crumpled it became clear there was only a half-creature left underneath it, waiting to fade the rest of the way away and crawl into the grave where it belonged. The fading had been a longer and uglier process than any of them expected. Now at the end of it, Jess only felt relief. 

She wondered, as she often did about everything, how they would’ve felt if they’d been ordinary children. Ordinary children would mourn the loss of a father who’d once been good to them, she thought. Ordinary children would mourn the loss of their old life as a family, would dread the start of their new life as disliked and hunted orphans. 

Instead they’d set off into the night straight away and not looked back. It felt natural and right to do that, and Jess hadn’t doubted herself. That wasn’t ordinary, she thought. And if it wasn’t ordinary, that made it evidence. She had spent her whole life compiling evidence, though what use she would ever be able to make of it she didn’t know. 

None of them really knew what being half fairy meant. Benny didn’t know about fairies at all. Their mother hadn’t been around to tell him the story the way she’d told Jess and Henry and Violet. Jess and Henry had held a few hushed conferences about it in the year after her death, about how and when they would tell him, and they’d always decided to wait. Until when, they hadn’t said, but they’d both understood what they were waiting for.

They had another of those conferences their third night on the run, after Benny had been plied with milk and fallen into an exhausted stupor. They included Violet this time, because she was old enough to be in on conferences, especially now that they only had each other. Later, Jess wished that they had perhaps waited a bit longer to start including Violet. A committee of three means somebody can have the deciding vote, and in the days to come it happened more often than not that the deciding vote was Violet’s. Usually she sided with Jess, but that night she sided with Henry. 

Violet had always been the unhappiest over what they were. Quiet, serious, talented Violet should’ve been the pride of any reasonable schoolteacher or authority. And she usually was, right up until that authority had reason to meet her father. Then Violet would become invisible, since she was too well-mannered to mistrust outright. 

“I often wonder if I’d get on better if I didn’t know,” Violet whispered earnestly, that third night. “I’ve thought maybe the thing that makes us so uncomfortable for people is that we expect to make them uncomfortable, so they naturally oblige us.”

Henry said. “I always say: the right attitude is the key to everything.” Violet nodded, looking a little pained. Henry did often say that. 

He said, “I figure it’s like this. If you just show people a hard worker with a good attitude, they’ll be happy with you and not think anything more about you. Once you get a reputation one way or the other it stays that way. Our problem is we’ve never had the chance to get a good reputation anywhere before. But this time we’re going to change that.

“Tomorrow I’ll go down to the village bright and early and look for some work. I’ll tell them my name is Henry James. That’s perfectly true. No one will have any reason to suspect. This is really the start of a new life for us. You’ll see, Vi.”

Violet nodded again, this time looking a little more keen. She didn’t always believe Henry, who had given similarly uplifting speeches at the start of every new school year, but she always trusted him. Henry always told the truth, even if it was only the truth as he saw it.

“I don’t want Ben growing up like the rest of us,” Violet said, “always knowing there’s something wrong about him and that people won’t like it. We’ll all have enough to worry about. He doesn’t need to worry about that on top of everything else.”

“I think he’s going to get along just fine,” said Henry encouragingly. “He’s a resilient little chap.”

Jess didn’t like the way the conversation was going. She didn’t think people disliked them because they expected people to dislike them. She didn’t think being hard workers with good attitudes was the key to anything, since they had been doing that all their lives already. She didn’t think their problem was never having a chance to get a reputation. She supposed Benny was a resilient little chap, but she couldn’t help comparing him with how she and Henry had been at that age, and how Violet had been, and worrying they were not raising him as well as their mother would have. 

But she couldn’t figure out how to explain her disapproval, and she was too used to being the sensible one, so she found herself saying instead, “It’s not just about how he’ll feel about it. If he knows, he might give us away.”

Henry and Violet nodded solemnly. They thought she was agreeing with them. She supposed she was.

She said, “It’s more important than anything for us to seem like ordinary children. I think it’s wrong for him to never know, but it could make us less safe if we told him right now.”

So that was that. But Jess knew the next time they had the conversation, if they ever did, it wouldn’t be about when to tell Benny but about whether to tell him at all. 

-

When Jess and Henry and Violet were younger it had been another fantastical bedtime story to them, as simultaneously real and unreal as red riding hood or the little cinder girl, but better because it was about their parents. 

In the bedtime story, their mother was a modern-day princess, the daughter of the richest and most powerful man in the land. The man was rich because he owned a very successful steel mill, but there was a secret to his success that not even he knew. He had built his mill not on Cottage Street where the other factories in Greenfield were, but out in the country, in the most beautiful spot he could find. Everyone said this was eccentric and superior of him. He said fresh air would make happier workers and a better product. 

In fact, he had built his mill on an old fairy hill, though he didn’t know it. He was too modern and practical to believe in fairies. But his daughter believed in them, and she saw the signs. She left milk and little presents out for them, and she snuck out of bed at night to sing songs and tell stories to the empty halls, and in return the fairies made the household prosperous. 

The workers at the mill would arrive in the morning and find unfinished work finished, and imperfect work more perfect than they’d thought. The maids at the house woke to find torn stockings mended and crumpled linens pressed. The food the cooks made there was widely considered to be the finest in the county. The fruits that grew in the orchard were succulent and abundant even in harsh years. 

One day, a new worker came to the mill. He was a quiet, small young man with a funny, crooked back and a funny, crooked nose. He didn’t look like someone who’d be up to hard labor, but he proved to be an outstandingly effective worker. He could fix anything that broke, so the girl’s father started bringing him around the house to help out. As soon as the girl saw him she knew what he was. She knew that he had listened to all her songs and stories, and had come there for her. Their courtship was mostly silent, conducted in glances and half-smiles, but they understood each other perfectly.

The fairies steal people, from time to time. Sometimes they take babies and leave a changeling behind. Sometimes they take sleepers with bright dreams, who wake to find that a hundred years have passed. Sometimes they even take people who want to be taken. 

The girl loved her father and didn’t want to hurt him by disappearing without a trace, so she told him she wanted to marry the crooked man. He forbade it. He’d liked the crooked man well enough when he was an eager worker who could fix anything, but as a husband for his only daughter, he appeared entirely differently. He was too small, too crooked, too poor. Fairies can only fool people for so long. Now when their grandfather looked at their father, he felt like the wool had fallen from his eyes. Now he saw something contemptible and sinister, and was afraid. He half-believed the man was a devil come to steal his daughter’s soul.

But the girl loved the crooked man desperately, and wanted more than anything to go with him. So one night they ran away together, leaving a note. The next day they read about the scandal in the newspaper. They read that the girl’s father had declared if he ever set eyes on the wastrel who’d stolen his daughter, he would kill him.

For three years they hid away under the fairy hill, but eventually the girl grew sorrowful and unhealthy. This often happens to humans who stay too long underground. So they left the hill again, and went out into the world as a married couple. The crooked man followed her because he loved her (“No one loves like a fairy loves,” their mother told them), but living aboveground meant that he always had to be watchful and stay in hiding from her father. They moved every few years, or sooner if people began to get suspicious of them. People always got suspicious about the children’s father eventually, no matter how honest and hardworking he continued to be. That was how people were about fairies.

The moral of this bedtime story was that it had all been worth it for love. Jess had believed in that truth fully, before the day she’d seen her grandfather. 

Before she saw him she’d imagined a wizened, gloomy figure, his eyes glinting with ancient malice and despair. But he looked like anybody, or like anybody who was rich. He had broad shoulders, a straight back, and a clear, guileless countenance. He didn’t look old enough to be a grandfather.

So Jess had no idea what was happening when her mother flung them off the road and clamped an icy, trembling hand over her mouth. As they lay in the cold ditch, her mother sheet-white and silent beside her, Jess regained enough awareness to realize they were hiding from the man in the road. She could tell that her mother was very afraid of the man, but she couldn’t guess why. They lay there for a long time, long after the man had disappeared from sight. It took Jess’s mother a quarter of an hour to un-thaw, during which time Jess held her hand tight and failed to arrive at the right conclusion.

Finally she could bear it no longer. “Who was that man?” she whispered. Her mother startled, and looked at her with wild eyes. 

“That was my father,” she whispered back. Jess nodded, mind spinning.

Jess watched her mother put her composure back together. First she steeled herself to get up from the ditch. Then she pulled Jess up beside her, and began to brush dirt off her apron and pull twigs from her hair with more vigor than necessary. She said, “If you’re on your own you should be safe. He doesn’t know what you look like.”

Jess mulled this over. They set off down the road again, now in the opposite direction. Jess wasn’t sure how they were going to get home that way. She supposed they would be moving again soon. 

“How does he know about me at all?” she asked, and her mother had told her the rest of the story.

“When I was a girl,” she said, “I believed my father would always be there for me no matter what. He was always so kind and indulgent. He would do anything to make me smile; he didn’t care if it made him look silly. I would often overhear him bragging about me to his friends with real pride. I thought he was the perfect father, even if he didn’t believe me about the fairies.”

“So even though I knew how angry he was that I’d run off with your father, and I’d read in the paper about how he wanted him dead – I didn’t believe it. I knew he would never be happy about who I chose, but I thought he would accept us in time. I thought he must want the bridge mended as badly as I did, and that would lead him to relent. And surely when he learned he was a grandfather, he would love you as well as he had loved me, and would be forced to relent for your sakes.” 

Jess was beginning see, now, why her mother had not included this part in the story before. She had a heavy feeling in her stomach.

“You went back?” she said.

Her mother nodded. “When I was pregnant with Violet. We’d just come back up from under the hill. We had nothing, and no way to establish ourselves in the human world again. I went to my father for help.”

Her mother fell silent again, until Jess prompted her. “I guess he didn’t relent?”

“No, he didn’t,” her mother said. Then she turned to look at Jess very seriously, and squeezed her hand. “Listen, Jesse-love. We have to stay away from him. He wants to hurt your father. He’s dangerous.”

Jess had known that. But, she thought, she hadn’t known it as well as she knew it now. 

“Does he want to hurt us?” she said.

Her mother said, “I don’t know. I don’t know him anymore. But he was very unhappy about – about my having you. And he knows about Benny now, too. He’s still looking for us, you see. He found us again a few years ago. That was when we left Townsend.”

Jess remembered they had left Townsend more hurriedly than usual, in the middle of the night and still in their pyjamas.

She said, “I’ll tell Henry,” because this was important information and that meant Henry had to know.

Their mother had given her a sad, weighty look that she hadn’t been able to interpret. “Oh, Jesse,” she said. “You don’t worry about that. I’ll tell him. I’ll tell you and Henry and Vi all the full story tomorrow. It’ll be a better story by then.”

She did, and it was. But Jess had told Henry first. 

-

One night when their mother was newly dead and their household newly in shambles, Henry had a bright idea. It had been too bright to keep to himself for a whole night, so he’d woken up Jess and made her come out in the garden with him, even though it was October and they could see their breath. Henry never felt right talking through things indoors. 

It had taken Jess a moment to catch up to him. Henry liked to dive straight into everything, projects and schemes and ideas and speeches. Jess was more methodically minded, and she was confused from being woken up. She’d been dreaming that her father and mother were dancing around a bonfire, leaping like demons and casting ghoulish, twisted shadows. As they danced they got smaller and smaller until they disappeared entirely, and only the bonfire was left. She could still see a ghost image of their dance, their figures now stepping lightly off the frozen fog of her breath. She shook her head and the figures dissolved. Henry, across from her, had the bonfire-light in his eyes. “We should go back,” he was saying.

 _Back?_ she thought. They had been so many places. Back where? Then she understood. Back under the hill. They’d left the hill because it made their mother sick, and now she was gone, and here they still were.

“How?” she whispered. “She never told us the way.”

Henry said. “Surely father must want to go back.”

Jess hadn’t thought of that. She had already begun thinking of their father in the past tense. 

Even though their father was the one who was the fairy, he was never the parent they’d talked to about it. Their father never talked much at all, had never known how to hold a polite human conversation. He became especially nervous and taciturn when you wanted him to talk about himself. Their mother explained that was how fairies were. In the same way that humans were animals, fairies were secrets. You can’t make a secret tell itself. Even when it wants to be told, it has no way of knowing how. 

That had never made any sense to Jess. She always told her secrets to Henry, sooner or later, and Henry never even tried to keep secrets from her. But then, they were only half-fairies. 

Jess tried to imagine how it would go. It seemed ridiculous, the idea that they could simply approach their father and say, “Please, we want to go to fairyland.” And then he would take them back, and they would all live happily where they belonged, and he would become a real fairy again and not waste away up here into nothing. It was a world-tiltingly strange idea. But the more she considered it the more she thought, why not? Henry was right: their father must want to go back. He must hate it here. He must be staying for them, or else out of overwhelming grief and listlessness. 

“Do you think it would make us sick, like mother? Violet - ”

Violet got sick frequently. Henry said, “I think it would be better for her there.”

Henry had no way of knowing that. Neither of them had been old enough to remember their lives under the hill. But Henry, being the oldest, was treated as the closest thing they had to an authority on the subject, and Jess usually trusted his assertions. 

“All right,” she said. “But would she like it? I have a funny idea it would disagree with her. She never lived there like we did.”

“She was conceived there. That matters. Now Benny –.”

They silently contemplated the problem of Benny. “He’s young enough to adjust to anything,” Jess said finally. “I’m more worried about Violet.”

They decided they would ask Violet before talking to their father. Henry wanted to go right in and wake her up too, but Jess made him wait for morning. Violet would have trouble falling back asleep, but it wasn’t only that. Jess wasn’t ready to have anyone else here with them yet, in the chill October air where the ghost-figures of their parents had been dancing on the fog, where everything might be about to change forever. 

Everything hadn’t changed forever, though. They’d asked Violet and Violet had sobbed and sobbed. She cried for a week, and frightened all the teachers who usually ignored her, and just when Jess had resigned herself to staying Violet had come to her and solemnly announced that she was ready to leave the “mortal coil” behind. 

So Henry had gone to talk to their father. That was when they had their big fight, the one Henry never forgave him for. Jess missed most of it. Violet turned white and fled the house before the yelling even started, so it fell to Jess to hide away with Benny. 

“Why is father mad?” Benny asked. He wasn’t afraid of the yelling because he had his bear, which would protect him from anything. He was confused about why everyone had been so peculiar lately. 

From the bedroom, the fight didn’t sound like a fight anymore. It sounded like the wailing and clashing of wind. Their father must be throwing things. Or maybe that _was_ the wailing and clashing of wind, come in to join the fray. Or maybe the sound was only so loud in Jess’s ears, the roaring of her own thoughts. She spoke loudly to Benny, to be heard over it, and didn’t know if she needed to.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Henry’s asking him if we can go away again, this time to somewhere we can stay.”

“Where’s that?” said Benny. He was only mildly curious. Their most recent move was the only one he could remember. He didn’t understand what being itinerant meant. 

“We don’t know,” she told him. “Only father knows the way. That’s why we need him.”

“It can’t be very good, then,” said Benny. They fell silent and listened to the din outside. Jess began to worry she should’ve gone after Violet. The light was funny, like there was a bad storm in the air. Or did it only look that way to Jess? She was not always sure the things she was seeing and hearing were real, and not trick visions crept up from beneath the hill.

The door to the bedroom blew open, and Henry blew in after it. He threw himself onto the bed, head on his arms, an illustration of perfect misery. When Henry felt things he felt them wholly.

Jess and Benny awaited his verdict in silence, but half an hour passed before he moved or spoke. He stayed frozen in the strange light while the shadows grew long. The evening was still, any wailing and clashing having spent itself abruptly. After a time Violet came back in and tried to get him to eat something, and when that failed she fed Benny instead and put them both to bed in the kitchen. Jess waited. She knew Henry would come back to life again in the night. 

Sure enough, as the long shadows faded and dissolved into each other Henry began to unthaw. His head sank the rest of the way down into his arms, and his legs curled under him, and that was when Jess approached him.

“He’s not a real one anymore, I don’t think,” Henry said softly. Jess was surprised by the contempt in his voice, which had never been there before when discussing their father. “I don’t think he could go back if he wanted to. There’s not enough of him left.”

“What did he say?” Jess said. 

“He said I was an idiot, ungrateful child who would squander our mother’s sacrifice,” Henry murmured furiously. “He said he would keep me from doing that if it was the last thing he did, which it would be.”

Jess tried to digest this information. “I don’t understand. What did he mean?”

“He means he’s only clinging onto life to keep us trapped here. I suppose he thinks mother suffered so much, it would be dishonorable for us not to keep on suffering in her name. 

“I told him Mother would want us to be happy. But he’s never cared about us, only about her. I’ve only just realized it. You knew it long before me, didn’t you Jess? That’s why you never bothered about him. I _hate him_.”

Henry spoke his last words like a curse. They fell heavily into the quiet night, and settled around the children portentously. It was another half hour before they spoke again. Jess didn’t let herself fall asleep because she could feel Henry lying tense beside her, which meant he had more to say.

“Could we get back without him, do you think?” he whispered at last. 

“We’d be right under grandfather’s nose,” Jess said. “Without knowing how to get in, we might wind up poking around there for months. I don’t even know how to begin looking for the way in. I imagine we’d have to, you know…” She waved her hands in the air above them. Do fairy things, she meant. Magical, fantastical things. None of them were real fairies. None of them knew any magic words, or how to make charms and spells, or however it was you did it. 

She felt Henry nod in the dark next to her. He knew what she meant, and why she didn’t say it. None of them said words like "magic". They didn’t even say "fairies" if they could help it. When they talked about where they came from they only said, "under the hill". 

-

From that time on, their father began to wither in earnest. It was like he was crumpling up in slow motion in front of them. Jess sometimes wondered if it was Henry’s hatred that was killing him. She didn’t do anything to prevent it. 

Henry, convinced of their father’s sinister purpose, dismissed him utterly. To Jess, things were less clear. She wished she’d heard more of the fight for herself and not just Henry’s account of it. 

There was no more discussion of looking for the land under the hill. October turned into November, which left them all feeling hollowed out and brittle, and that turned into December, which left them adrift in the wake of everyone else’s Christmas cheer. Violet became intensely serious about seasonal decorating with what little materials she could come up with. Jess thought she might be trying to keep the family together with pins and craft tape. If anyone could manage such a thing it would be Violet.

One day Jess looked at their father, a drunk husk on the house’s only bed, and realized it would be much worse for them if he died in the winter. 

“Father,” she said to the husk, “You must hold on a little longer. Only until spring. I imagine we can manage then, in the spring.”

The husk rasped something, and reached out a shaking hand to her. Jess turned away and went outside, and tried not to think of what she’d just said. She felt the words sticking to her, lingering around her mouth and creeping down her spine. She began to vigorously sweep the porch, trying to sweep the memory away with the dust.

Their father died on the first day of spring. Jess didn’t waste time mourning. 

Spring was setting-up time. Spring was perfect for a new start, for putting together their new home. Summer was settling-in time, when everything they’d put in motion began to flourish. They spent lazy afternoons by the pool they’d made, held elaborate dinner parties on chipped cups in the forest, gorged themselves on juicy cherries from Mrs. McAllister’s orchard. Mrs. McAllister told them she couldn’t remember so good a growing season in all the years she’d lived there. There was plenty to spare for children who were so awfully helpful. Especially that fine boy, Henry. Henry became indispensable in Mrs. McAllister’s circles as the cheerful, rosy-cheeked lad who could fix anything. 

As the summer wound down, Jess and Henry started to get serious again. Fall would be an industrious time, a time to batten down the hatches for winter. Their first winter alone would be their first real trial. Jess was determined that they could do everything for themselves. 

Then Violet got sick, and she saw that they couldn’t. And then their grandfather found them, and she saw that if they went with him would never have to.

“It’s down to you, Jesse old girl,” Henry said to her, late one night outside Dr. McAllister’s. Jess nodded; she knew. She was the one who’d decided they were leaving, after their father died. She was the one who decided they were staying, when they found the boxcar. She was the one who had to decide if they would go live with their grandfather.

“We’ll go with him,” she said. “Benny and Violet adore him, and I can tell he loves us as well. And it will give us a chance to look.”

Look for a way back under the hill, she meant. Henry furrowed his brow. “You still think we’ll need it?” he said. “You aren’t convinced by grandfather? Because I have to say, I’m bally well convinced. Look at how good he is with Vi. He’s the real deal.”

“I think so too,” Jess said. “But I can’t help remembering how mother always said he was a perfect, loving father when she was young. Suppose we grow up and begin to do things he doesn’t approve of?”

Henry waved this aside. “He cried, you know,” he said. “When he was talking to me about mother the other day. He told me it was the worst mistake he ever made. He said he wants nothing more than to make up for it and to make us happy. I believed him, Jess, you should’ve seen him.”

“I have seen him,” she said. “I saw him in Violet’s room today, looking at her embroidery. He said she had the delicate touch just like mother, and he said there have never been two more artful ladies in all of Greenfield. And later he was telling Benny the funniest stories about his new bear, and he told Benny he had a big imagination like our mother.”

“So you see,” said Henry. “He really regrets it.”

“Yes,” Jess agreed. “And that’s why we’ll go with him. But all the same, it won’t hurt to look. Just in case. Or just to, to know.”

Henry nodded. “Will we tell the others? That we’re looking?”

“Not right away, I should think, unless we make some progress. Violet’s still recovering. I want her to get settled, and not worry that we might be leaving again. I believe she might finally have a chance to be happy and appreciated with grandfather. I hope it’s true.”

And Benny, of course, still didn’t know what they were. He would be starting real school once they moved in with grandfather. Learning to be a real boy, Jess thought. Part of her hated that. She and Violet had been doing a fine job teaching Benny to read. She balked at the thought that they couldn’t provide him with everything he might need. 

“All right then,” Henry said. “A secret quest it is. Just like old times, eh Jess?”

Henry’s eyes were glittering in the orchard moonlight. There was something impish about his countenance in moments like this, which Jess had always liked. It had been a long time since they’d a secret that was just for them. They had been too concerned with being a family, lately, to remember to be children. 

“A secret quest,” Jess said. They shook on it.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything was perfect at Grandfather’s. That was the problem.

Violet was happy. She could stay industrious and do all the things she loved. She had better fabrics, better papers and paints, better materials to make anything she could think of. And everything she made was sure to be met with enthusiastic approval from their grandfather, no matter how humble the project or how caught up he was with work. 

Benny was happy. He was busy as a bee as well, with school and with exploring his new kingdom. He roved all over the grounds in high adventuring spirits, and delighted everyone in the house with his sprightly nature. At first Benny was inclined to be astounded by the fine things they had, and the maids entertained themselves by presenting him with marvels; but he was also the quickest to accept marvels as the new standard. Jess remembered saying to Henry, "He’s young enough to adjust to anything." 

Henry was happy. Jess should’ve expected it. Henry had always been a happy boy in general, except for the year between their mother’s death and their father’s. And when he was for something he was all in. Previously, having thought their grandfather to be cruel, he had reviled him. Now that their grandfather was kind Henry forgave him whole-heartedly, and enthusiastically set about learning to be a perfect grandson. He took to following him about, studiously “learning the business,” which he would inherit some day. Grandfather raved over how bright and eager he was, what a good head for figures he had, how well liked he was by the workers. 

Jess had hoped all this “learning the business” would give Henry a good chance to poke around the mill and search for the way under the hill. But so far, their quest proved a bit of a letdown. Henry told her he didn’t dare give their grandfather the slip during these trips, since he was determined to stay in his good books. 

Jess thought Henry would have to work very hard indeed to escape their grandfather’s good books. If anything could do it, she supposed it would be the topic of fairies. They never mentioned fairies to their grandfather, or he to them. Jess supposed he still didn’t believe in them. 

Jess wasn’t happy. She wasn’t like Violet, whose greatest internal drive was to make things. She wasn’t like Henry, whose greatest internal drive was to do things. You could make things and do things whether you were poor or rich. The things might be different, but that wasn’t the important part. 

Jess got up her courage and admitted to their grandfather she was feeling purposeless. She didn’t put it like that. She said, wasn’t there anything she could do that would be helpful? She missed cooking for their family, she told him, and the forest dinner parties they used to have. 

Their grandfather looked at her with his warm, kind eyes, and took her to the kitchens and told her to make anything her heart desired. The maids would be happy to help. When she was done, they’d all have a dinner party together to try what she’d made.

She played around in the kitchens for a week before realizing she couldn’t stand it. The cook didn’t need her there, could probably work better without her. She still didn’t have a purpose. 

Their grandfather brought her the boxcar. Jess couldn’t imagine how expensive it must be to move a whole boxcar from the middle of the forest to the edge of their Italian garden. He said it was a present for all of them, but she knew it was for her. 

The others were thrilled with the present. Benny was happy to have his old pink cup back, and the new bear Jess and Violet had made from his stockings. But these things lived in the boxcar now, not up in his room with him. They were there for playing pretend – for playing at what had once been real. 

Jess felt badly for not appreciating the present enough. She tried, and for a while having the boxcar there made things better. But it wasn’t a real home anymore, now that they didn’t need it to be. She wasn’t a real homemaker anymore, now that they didn’t need her to be. 

Instead Jess threw herself into looking for the fairy door, even as Henry’s interest waned. She could care about finding the door because even if it wasn’t a useful activity, she told herself it might be useful someday. Right now everything was rosy with their grandfather, and it looked like they could live there, safe and loved, forever. But there was no knowing the future. Jess was the one who made sure her family had what they needed, which meant that if they ever needed that door, she would have it ready for them. 

-

For the first few weeks, Jess and Henry had worked on making a map of the house and grounds. They decided they should know the territory they were working with before making a deep dive in any particular direction. Jess had got Benny involved, since he was such a keen explorer, by telling him they were making a treasure map.

Once the map was done the project began to flag. They still had no idea what they should be looking for. They circled all the spots that seemed likely – any place that felt secret, lonely, and out-of-the-way. 

(“Of course,” Henry said, “We might have it all upside down. It could be hidden in plain sight.”

He wanted to start circling all the places that seemed least likely, too, but Jess was determined to work through their map methodically. “One idea at a time,” she said crisply.)

Then they would go to those spots and search them as thoroughly as they could. Jess did this more and more often on her own, as Henry became busy with shadowing their grandfather. She couldn’t help but feel she was wasting her time. She was sure there had to be something more to finding the door than just finding it. It would be hidden by more than ordinary concealment. 

Their other strategy was plying the household staff for information. This seemed easy enough at first. Everyone acted nearly as glad as their grandfather was for them to be there. It was unnerving, almost. Jess was so used to being distrusted.

The maids were happy to chat with her, but she couldn’t find a way to get anything useful out of them. Only the housekeeper had been there in their mother’s time. Jess had an idea that their mother must’ve learned about the fairies from someone in the house, but if it had been Mrs. McGregor she was keeping mum about it. All she would say was that their mother had a wonderful imagination and was always coming up with stories. Jess asked what sorts of stories, but Mrs. McGregor just said, “Oh, every sort you can imagine. Anything was a romance to that girl.” 

Jess asked where her mother had played as a girl, where her favorite spots around the house and grounds had been. The rose garden, she was told, and the widow’s walk. Those were two of the first places they’d checked. They were Jess’s favorites, too. 

One night Jess lay awake, thinking over the problem, and came up with a third strategy. She wanted to go into Henry’s room to tell him her idea, but something wouldn’t let her. She and Henry didn’t have nearly as many night conferences as they’d used to. This business of having separate bedrooms and separate lives was isolating.

Instead she put on her dressing gown and crept down to the kitchen alone. She got a saucer from a cupboard and opened the refrigerator to retrieve a leftover half-pint of milk she knew should be there. It wasn’t. 

For about a minute, Jess gazed idly around the gloom of the night kitchen. Now that there was no milk, her plan had been hampered. She’d just made up her mind to go on with the next stage of it anyway, because she did not want to go back to bed, when she saw the cup. 

She might easily have missed it. She only saw it because she happened to look in the right gloomy corner, and because a ribbon of moonlight happened to bounce off a chip in the rim of the cup, and because that particular chip in that particular cup was distinctive to her. 

Benny’s pink cup belonged out in the Boxcar. Yet here it was on the kitchen floor at night, filled with milk, left out for the fairies. Had Benny put it there? It didn’t make sense. Benny didn’t even know about fairies. But if it had been anyone else in the house, why use Benny’s cup and not one of the ordinary saucers, the way she’d been about to do?

Maybe they’d thought that, being an irregular dish, it wouldn’t be missed if put to irregular purposes. Jess tried to tell herself that. But she couldn’t help wondering if Benny’s fondness for the cup had caused somebody to associate it with fairies. She felt a cold tendril of fear roll down her neck.

Jess didn’t carry on with her plan that night. She snuck back to bed, being more careful now in case whoever had placed the cup was still lurking. Over breakfast she tried to question Benny about it, but he was inclined to be obstructive. 

“What cup?” he said.

“Your pink cup, Benny,” Jess said patiently. “Surely you haven’t forgot your dear pink cup?”

“Oh, that old thing,” Benny said. This was something he’d started saying recently; no one was sure why. “I don’t use that old thing any more.”

“You had it yesterday,” put in Violet helpfully.

“Did he?” said Jess, gratefully turning her attention to Violet. “Where did you see him with it?”

“She never did see me,” said Benny. 

“Well, in the boxcar,” said Violet. “We were there having a picnic with Ginseng bear. He had his milk in it, didn’t you Benny? And didn’t you say there never was better milk than out of your favorite pink cup?”

“Oh,” said Jess, feeling very silly. “And I suppose you took the cup back to the kitchen afterwards? And Benny had some more milk there, perhaps, and set it down, and forgot to finish his milk and wash it.”

“Oh no,” said Violet. “I washed it myself, and Benny and I took all our things back to the boxcar after.”

“You mightn’t have forgotten the cup?” Jess said.

“No,” Violet said. She looked gently concerned. “I put the cup back on the shelf myself, too.”

“Only,” Jess said helplessly, “I found it in the kitchen.”

“Oh,” said Violet. “Well, Benny did you -?”

They turned to question Benny again, but he’d made his escape. 

Jess went out to the Boxcar. The cup was there on the shelf where it belonged. She put it in her pocket, to keep anyone else from absconding with it.

That night she snuck down to the kitchen again. After scanning the floor to make sure no offerings were already waiting, she took the pink cup out of her pocket, filled it with the milk she’d saved from breakfast, and set it in the same dark corner. Then she stared at it and worried she was losing her mind. She didn’t know what she meant by using the cup. It would probably have been safer to use one of the saucers. It would probably have been safer not to use anything, and to have stayed in bed. 

After a minute Jess forced her eyes away. They’d never come if she was looking for them. She left the kitchen and went outside towards the rose garden, and tried to think of a story to tell. She wasn’t a natural with stories the way Violet was, the way their mother had been. 

She made her way slowly through the gardens without thinking of anything, before finding herself in the boxcar once more. The pink cup was there on its shelf, empty and clean, between Ginseng bear and the dinner bell. She thought it had been about twenty minutes since she’d left it on the kitchen floor, but the winding path through the rose garden had muddled her sense of time. 

Jess turned around and sat down in the doorway. She looked out at the tidy Italian garden, so different from the woods she’d used to see. At least she had an idea for a story, now. Seeing Ginseng bear had prompted it. She’d told Benny many bear stories over the years, so she knew how those went. 

“Once, there lived a bear named Ginseng,” she said to the garden, “and he was the bravest bear in the land. He was the only bear in the land with a tail, which was where he kept his bravery – and it was a long tail, too, so he could keep a lot of it. Ginseng had a fine braided red collar, which he was very proud of, because the collar meant he was an Important Bear. He was the royal protector bear of the Prince Benny. That made him the most Important Bear in the country.” 

Jess had set up her story nicely, she thought, but now she did not know where to take it. She felt too worried and forlorn for storytelling.

“Ginseng guarded Prince Benny,” she said, “wherever he went. He always knew when Prince Benny was in danger, and he always knew just what to do to save him.” 

That, she thought, was her anxiety coming out in story form. Now she ought to tell about a danger Benny had faced, and how Ginseng had saved him from it. But she didn’t want to talk about danger to Benny. Instead she began talking about the tea parties Ginseng and Prince Benny and their friends would have. 

“And at the end of the day, Ginseng went to bed with Prince Benny and curled up around him, so that he could protect him even in his sleep,” she finished. The garden was silent and empty. She didn’t look behind her, in case anyone was there listening.

“It’s not much of a story,” she added. “I’m sorry.”

She wished she hadn’t said that. They didn’t like it if you addressed them directly. If she had made any progress with the story, she had probably undone it with the closing remark.

-

The next morning at breakfast, Benny was in a snit. “He’s lost Ginseng bear,” Violet told them.

“How did you lose him, Benny?” Henry asked, but Benny wouldn’t say.

“He went down to the boxcar this morning,” Violet answered for him, “and Ginseng wasn’t there. We must’ve misplaced him the other day. I was so sure I put everything back where it went.”

“You did,” Jess said. “I was in the boxcar yesterday, and Ginseng was on the shelf by Benny’s cup.”

“Oh, about the cup,” Violet began to say, when Benny talked over her.

“You STOLE him,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at Jess. His eyes were wild and his expression was furious. Jess, Violet, and Henry regarded him in alarm.

“I promise I didn’t touch him, Benny,” Jess said.

“I knew you’d stole him,” Benny said, and ran out of the room. Jess met Henry’s eyes across the table.

Violet stood up and said, “I’ll talk to him,” and followed Benny out. 

Violet and Henry looked at each other. She would tell him what she’d done. She was sure that she had somehow caused Ginseng to go missing. The cup had been moved that night; why not the bear? She wondered if the fairies were playing a mean joke on her. 

Before she could begin, Henry said, “Grandfather’s going to introduce me to his accounts manager today.” He sounded nervous. “Mr. Stone. They’re old friends. Grandfather said I should get him talking about when he was at Cambridge. Do you think it’s too early to be thinking about college, Jess?”

“Yes,” Jess said. She would tell him later. 

-

The week that followed was hard on everybody. Benny couldn’t find his bear, and his temper grew worse. He was sure Jess had stolen Ginseng. No one could convince him otherwise, or cajole him into explaining why he thought this. 

Grandfather took him to see a horse race and bought him ice cream, but he refused to be cheered up. Violet started to worry Grandfather would realize he’d made a mistake taking them in, although he showed no signs of holding Benny’s temper against them.

Jess walked in on a cluster of maids whispering to each other frantically. They all clammed up when they saw her, and shuffled around and dispersed. Had they been talking about Benny? A week ago they had all adored him. 

It happened again, later that same day. Had they been talking about _her_? Jess became an inveterate eavesdropper after that. She felt paranoid that there was something she should know about and didn’t. She didn’t overhear anything elucidating, but she didn’t hear anything reassuring either. 

She heard Mrs. MacGregor and Mary talking about Grandfather. They worried he was expending too much of his energy entertaining the children with horse races and ice creams when he wasn’t a young man anymore. They thought he was trying to have a second youth, a second chance at fatherhood. 

She heard Mary and Lucille talking about Henry. They were highly approving of him, but that didn’t put Jess in a better mood. Lucille was very pretty, and only a year or two older than them.

She heard Lucille and Mr. Watson talking about disturbances on the grounds. They thought there was an animal getting into things, but they couldn’t agree on what it was. Mr. Watson thought it was a bear. Lucille was convinced it was a giant wolf, and let herself get hysterical over it. 

Mrs. Watson was brought in as a calming influence. She had also seen the animal. She also thought it was a bear. Lucille insisted otherwise. “I'm sure it had a tail,” she kept saying.

Jess crept away, tired of this, and decided it was high time to track down Henry for a conference. She found him in his study, working on math sheets from school. Henry had developed a passion for math ever since Grandfather praised his number sense in front of the foreman. 

Jess felt irrationally irked with Henry’s math sheets for having his attention. She picked them up and tucked them under her arm, and sat down on the table in their place. Henry looked up at her, indulgent. 

“I don’t think this life is agreeing with Benny,” she began.

Henry frowned. “Benny’s happy as a clam,” he said, before remembering the past week. “Well, he was. He’s only in a strop over his bear, and Violet says she’s making him a new one.”

“Is that what she’s been doing?” Jess had received more than her share of Benny’s temper because Violet, who usually spent the most time with him these days, had taken to vanishing into her room for hours on end, citing secret art projects. “He got over his old bear in two days,” Jess said.

“Well, he and the old one didn’t go through so much together,” Henry said. 

“If Ginseng was so important, then why did he keep him out in the Boxcar?” Jess said, a little more forcefully than she meant to. “He didn’t even want him most of the time. I don’t think that’s all this is.”

Henry was looking at her oddly. Jess realized she sounded angry, unreasonably upset over a small boy not loving his toy bear well enough. 

“What do you think it is, then?” Henry said.

“I think he’s getting spoilt, living here,” she said. “He’s too used to being the little prince, and it’s going to his head.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Henry said. “I ought to be spending more time with him, I know - being a positive example and all that. I’m just so dashed busy with all this.” He waved his hand vaguely around the study, and slumped back in his chair. 

“It’s hard work being a real boy, Jess.” He closed his eyes, and spoke to the ceiling. “That’s how I’ll start my talk with Benny, I think. ‘It’s hard work, being a real boy, eh Benny?’” 

Jess looked down at Henry as he rambled on, trying to plan his talk. It went in many directions at once. Henry would impress on Benny the importance of getting serious and paying attention in school; he would impress on Benny the importance of relaxing and not letting it all overwhelm him. He would talk about what a big change they were all going through and how everything was different now; he would talk about how they were the same people inside so nothing was really different after all, was it? Jess wasn’t sure what impression Benny would take away from all this, and she wasn’t hugely confident that it would fix their problem.

Henry looked drawn. She was surprised at herself for not noticing it earlier. It _was_ hard work for him, she realized, being a real boy. She made supportive noises about his speech, and determined not to give him any more burdens. 

-

Benny got worse. Jess didn’t know if Henry ever had that talk with him. She wasn’t sure if Benny remembered he was mad at her for supposedly stealing Ginseng, or if was just angry now out of habit, but it was clear she wouldn’t get anywhere with him. Violet could make him behave – and that smarted, since Jess was older – but Violet was more and more frequently shut in her room.

Jess had begun to feel a knot of desperation coiling up inside her. Every day added another thread to the coil. 

“How’s the new bear coming?” she asked Violet one afternoon, when she caught her slipping out of her room to wash a fistful of brushes.

“What bear?” Violet said.

“Haven’t you been making a new bear for Benny?”

“Oh!” Violet said. She looked stricken. “I’m sorry Jess, I’ve been so busy with everything else that I forgot.”

“Everything else?” Jess asked. 

Violet looked shy. “Well, you know how I’ve been working on a project,” she said. “I’ve been making a present for Grandfather, to thank him for taking us in. I’m trying to have it all done in time for Christmas. That’s why I’ve been so distracted.”

“Oh,” Jess said. She tried to muster up more enthusiasm and added, “Will you show it to me? Or do I need to wait until it’s done?”

Violet agreed to show her. Jess felt the knot of tension go slack, a little. Henry might be too busy for her and Benny might hate her, but at least she was still the only person allowed to see things Violet was working on before she was done with them.

The knot tightened again when they were up in Violet’s room, though. The room had nearly vanished under a feverish explosion of art. There were papers and pencils, sketches and watercolors, needles and thread and scraps of fabric over every surface. Jess had never known Violet to be so unorganized. 

Violet wound her way through the mess, careless of it, and extracted seven embroidery hoops. She laid them on the unmade bed for Jess’s inspection.

In each hoop was one of the gardens. There was the Italian garden with their boxcar in vibrant scarlet thread. There was the hedge maze, and the orchard, and the rose garden. Each rose was an intricate, glimmering work of art.

“They’re amazing, Violet,” Jess said, breathless. They were amazing. They were also unsettling. Here were seven truly perfect things in a sea of chaos. Violet, now that Jess got a better look at her, appeared nervous and worn out. There were circles under her eyes and her skin looked thin.

“Are you feeling well?” Jess asked. “You haven’t been working yourself sick, have you?” She didn't know how she had missed this.

“I’m doing fine,” Violet said. “I’ll start on that bear straight-away, just as soon as I’m finished with these. I only have the Italian garden left to work on. I might get it done tonight, if I stay up late.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Jess said. “If you’re still working at bedtime I shall come in and take your needles away.”

Violet looked mulish, but didn’t protest. Jess told her again that her project was beautiful and sure to delight Grandfather. Then she went to find Henry. She needed to tell him she was worried about Violet, now, too. 

Henry wasn’t anywhere she looked. He was probably with grandfather. It was just as well. She’d decided not to burden him any more. 

She gave up on finding Henry and slowed her march to a stroll. She was out on the Ramble, now. In the early autumn it had been strewn with foxgloves, which Violet had depicted as a sea of tiny, sparkling beads. She must have made that one first. Then she would’ve made the orchard, which had been laden with the glassy red apples of late fall. Jess had almost been able to taste them through the fabric. 

She looked around and tried to see the world as Violet had made it: a world in vibrant thread and perfect stitches. The memory of it danced before her eyes, more sharp and real than reality. Violet’s embroidery had been inhumanly beautiful, and Jess had been afraid of it. 

Jess walked through the Ramble and thought about worlds. She thought about their grandfather’s world of cooks and maids and butlers, of fine china and lush furniture and deep-voiced businessmen in tall hats. Superimposed on that was their mother’s childhood world, the one where kindly fairies were lurking around every corner, the world of warm stories told to empty, dark halls. Then there was Violet’s embroidered world. And somewhere there was the true fairy world, the world Jess could not find a door to. What would that look like?

Would it look like Violet’s embroidery?

Suddenly the spell of the afternoon was broken by a shrill cry from the direction of the Italian garden. “Get off them!” someone shouted. That was Violet. There was a thumping sound, and a tearing sound, and a howl. 

Jess took off running.

Outside the boxcar, Violet was struggling with something huge and lurching. Behind them was a green woman. Her sleeve was torn, and underneath it Jess could see her arms were splintered and dripping sap. They were clutched tight around the small, curled up figure of Benny.

“Benny!” Jess cried, running forward. The creature’s flailing tail knocked her over into the mud. She scrambled to right herself, but the fight was happening almost overtop her now.

Violet had her arms clamped around the creature’s snout, holding its jaws closed. It wouldn’t have worked on an ordinary animal that size, but this one seemed bound by strange laws of motion. They almost looked like they were struggling underwater. 

Jess realized Violet was pushing the creature sideways, not backwards. She was trying to transfer her grip on its jaw to her left arm only, freeing her right. In her right hand she was clutching a needle. She must’ve come out here to finish her embroidery, so that Jess couldn’t take her needles away from her. 

Jess saw the creature’s tail creeping around behind Violet. She dove for the tail, and as she did she caught a glimpse of a red collar and suddenly understood what this thing was. “Ginseng, stop!” she shouted.

The creature shuddered and froze in place. Violet stepped back from it, panting. 

Ginseng was a monstrosity, this much enlarged. Jess had always thought of him as a kind bear. He did not look kindly now.

Violet raised her needle, and bent close to the bear. Jess had thought Violet was trying to use the needle to stab him, before. Now she realized that Violet was going to sew Ginseng’s mouth shut. She said, “Stop!” again.

Everyone looked down at her. Violet, the green woman, the frozen Ginseng, and Benny. Benny had a placid and happy expression, the way he did when he was nearly asleep. He didn’t appear bothered by the fight. He was wearing a flower crown.

“I’m a prince, Jess,” he told her, pointing to his crown. It was the first polite thing he’d said to her in days.

“It’s all right, Jess,” Violet said, helping her up. “Grandmother doesn’t mean us any harm.”

“ _Grandmother_?” Jess said.

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” Violet said in a rush. “We came here to be reunited with our Grandfather, but we forgot about our father’s side. Now we have two whole families, and just a few months ago we didn’t have any at all!”

Jess shifted guiltily. She hadn’t forgot their father’s side. They should’ve told Violet they were looking for the door. They should’ve told Benny about fairies. They should never have let them wander into this, whatever this was. 

Jess looked at Grandmother. Grandmother was a small, crooked woman. She looked like a tree that had accidentally grown in a shape resembling a human figure. She didn’t look dissimilar to their father. 

“Pleased to meet you,” Jess said to her, in a faint voice. Grandmother continued to peer down at her, owlishly. 

“How do, how long -” Jess was at a loss for words. She put herself in order and began again, addressing Violet. “How did you and Grandmother meet?”

“We’ve only met just now,” Violet said excitedly, “Just about twenty minutes ago. But she’s known us for much longer! It was just like with Grandfather. You remember how he found out who we were before we ever knew who he was, and we only knew him as the kindly gentleman? Well, Grandmother has been watching me work on my embroidery for weeks, and helping me out, all without my knowing it!” 

“Helping you out?” Jess said.

“That’s why I’ve felt so inspired!” Violet said. “It was all Grandmother’s doing. It’s been amazing, Jess. I can make anything now. The thread listens to me, and my needles never dare prick me.

“I'd just finished the last one not twenty minutes ago, like I said, when Grandmother showed up. It wasn’t until it was all finished, you see, that she could come through to see it. But – oh.”

Violet flagged. Jess followed her gaze to where the embroidery hoop was lying in the dirt. Haltingly, Violet picked it up and tried to brush it clean. She looked like she was going to cry.

“We can clean it, Vi,” Jess said, although she wasn’t sure. She could see, even through the dirt, that the finished piece was the most exquisite one yet. 

The green woman took the hoop from Violet and did something with it, and then it was clean again. Jess couldn’t tell what she had done. It was hard for Jess’s eyes to stay focused on her. 

Violet burst into tears. Jess hoped they were tears of relief.

“Violet, I think you need to be careful,” Jess told her, slowly. “This inspiration. I think it’s been talking a lot out of you. You don’t look well.”

“That’s only the human girl,” Violet said, sniffing.

“The what?” Jess said. This was so unlike anything Jess had expected Violet to say, that she was not sure she’d heard correctly. 

“The human Violet,” Violet explained. “Now, _she's_ a silly thing. She cares what everyone thinks of her. But this is what she really wants.” She motioned with the embroidery hoop.

“Grandmother has explained it all,” she said. “All I have to do is let the human girl fade away, and then only this will be left.”

“But Violet,” Jess said, feeling lost. “You don’t want the human girl to fade away, do you?”

“Oh, yes I do,” said Violet happily. “Then we can all go live with Grandmother and be a family.”

“But Violet,” Jess said again. “What about all going to live with _Grandfather_ to be a family?” 

“He doesn’t even believe in fairies,” Violet said. “He doesn’t believe in us.”

“Weren’t you making all this for him? For his Christmas present?” Jess asked. Violet looked far away. There was something distant yet intense in her eyes. Jess wondered if she had looked that way when making her embroidery. 

“Please,” Jess pleaded. “I’m sure you can’t kill off your human half without killing off the rest of you. Please say you’ll stop it, Violet, please.” 

Jess was crying now. Violet had an expression Jess had never seen on her before. She looked pitiless, Jess realized. Violet had never in her life been able to look at somebody crying without being stirred to compassion. 

“How do you know?” Violet said, unmoved. “You don’t know anything about it. I can do _whatever I want_ , Jess. So can you, or how do you explain that horrible bear?”

My Violet, Jess thought, would never call Ginseng bear horrible. 

Jess looked at Ginseng. His countenance was sorrowful. She looked at Benny, who was a prince in his flower crown.

“What about Benny?” Jess said. “How did Grandmother meet Benny?

“My ‘ent-or-age,” Benny said.

“His entourage,” Violet explained. “Grandmother sent some of her servants to watch over him. Her small servants can come and go more freely than she can, you see. Benny’s been sneaking out to play with them. That’s why he’s been so secretive. And it’s why the dishes keep turning up in odd places – I started to tell you about that before. They’ve been having picnics.”

“Benny,” Jess said firmly, “You are not really a prince. You do not have an entourage.”

She tried to take Benny back from Grandmother, but he hissed like a cat and pulled away from her. Grandmother looked down at her with huge, liquid eyes that gave nothing away. Jess wondered if she was being judged unfavorably. 

“What about Henry?” she said. Benny and Violet were embroiled in whatever this was. Was Henry?

“Grandmother says his human side is stronger than mine and Benny’s. He’s almost too old. You’re right in the middle, Jess.”

“Too old for what?” Jess said.

Their grandmother did another thing Jess’s eyes couldn’t follow, and suddenly Henry was there in the garden with them. It wasn’t the real Henry, but an image of him, which hung suspended in the fading winter light. 

Then the image of Henry split into two Henrys. They looked the same, but Jess could tell the difference: one was human, and the other wasn’t.

The human Henry spoke. He sounded like Henry, but tinny and vague. “I’m going to meet Grandfather’s accounts manager,” he said. “We’re going to Cambridge to marry Lucille.”

The fairy Henry spoke. “But _I’m_ going to be the king under the hill,” he said. He was grinning impishly at her, the way she liked. “Wouldn’t you rather have me, than that one? I’ll be the King, and you’ll be the Queen, and you’ll have everything just the way you want it. You made so much out of an old Boxcar, Jess; just think what you could do with a whole kingdom.

“You can choose me, Jess,” the fairy Henry insisted. “Your words have power. Look at what you did to Ginseng. You can choose this. You and me and Violet and Benny can all go be fairies, and we can live together under the hill with Grandmother the way we were supposed to.”

What had Jess done to Ginseng? She had made him Benny’s royal protector. "He always knew when Prince Benny was in danger, and he always knew just what to do to save him," she’d said.

True, she’d just told Benny that he wasn’t really a Prince and didn’t have an entourage. But she hadn’t told Ginseng that he wasn’t still Benny’s protector bear. 

She didn’t know what was happening out here, didn’t know what Grandmother was and whether she meant them harm. But Ginseng knew, because that was what Jess had made him for. 

“Ginseng,” Jess said, “Now.”

Ginseng unfroze and lunged at Grandmother. The Henrys blinked out of existence. Violet screamed. 

As Ginseng moved, his tail whipped around ahead of him to snatch up Benny. The moment Benny was aloft, Ginseng knocked Grandmother to the ground and began tearing her apart and devouring her. Benny looked down on the scene of carnage with mild interest. 

When Violet screamed Jess had grabbed her, to stop her from trying to interfere. But once Grandmother was down, Violet sagged against Jess as if her strings had been cut. Now she was gasping hollowly and clutching her embroidery hoop. 

“Violet,” said Jess, softly but urgently. “Violet, we’re safe now. You’re safe, Violet, but you have to do one more thing for me, alright?” 

Over Violet’s shoulder Jess could see Ginseng bouncing Benny around on his tail. Benny was laughing and clapping. Ginseng’s muzzle was bloody with sap. The remains of Grandmother lay forgotten beneath them, like so many twigs. 

“Violet,” Jess said picking up the other end of the embroidery hoop, “I need you to take one stitch out. Just one stitch, a small one that won’t be noticed. Grandfather will never know it isn’t finished. But it can’t be finished, don’t you see?”

Violet was insensate, half-sobbing. Jess gently picked up her hand, which still held her needle, and slipped the needle into the little red boxcar. She held Violet’s hand as they slowly pulled out one stitch. 

_It wasn’t until it was all finished that she could come through and see it,_ Violet had said. All this time that Jess had been hunting for a door, Violet had been making one. 

Jess had wanted to see the land under the hill so badly. She’d thought it would be a place where they’d be understood, where they’d be with their own kind. But what was their kind? She looked at the remains of Grandmother, and felt sick. 

Violet’s door was too dangerous to leave open, at least for now. They were just children who didn’t know anything, and look where it had landed them.

“Come here, Ginseng,” Jess said. She couldn’t let go of Violet, but she wanted Benny with her too. Ginseng padded over and put his wet muzzle in the crook of her neck.

“You’re a good bear,” she told him. “I’m sorry I froze you. I didn’t understand that you were helping.” 

Benny had been bounced into a sleepy state. He was now snuggled into the coils of Ginseng’s tail, clutching the tip of it the way he’d used to clutch the entire bear when Ginseng was smaller.

“I need to get them back up to the house,” Jess told Ginseng. “If you carry Benny, can you keep from being seen?” 

Ginseng nodded his great head and began to make his lurching, underwater path back across the Italian garden with Benny. Jess and Violet followed more slowly. Violet had still not begun to come back to herself by the time they got inside.

Jess put Benny to bed first. He clung to her, but all he said was, “Gosh, I’m awfully tired, Jess.” She kissed his forehead and tucked him in with Ginseng, who had obligingly become small enough to fit, though not nearly as small as he had been before.

Then she took Violet to her room. It was still a mess. Jess would make sure to clean it out thoroughly tomorrow. She didn’t want any of Grandmother’s inspiration lingering around. 

She tried to ask Violet questions to make sure she was still herself, and not the fairy girl who had looked at Jess with no pity. All Violet would say was, “I feel I could sleep for a week.” Eventually Jess left her to it, after making up a hot water bottle and leaving some tea things on her side table. Jess wasn’t afraid for Violet the way she had been earlier. Her sleep appeared natural. She didn’t have that paper-thin, ensorcelled look.

She went into her own room, and laid down on top of her tidily made bed, and tried to think what to do now. Henry, she thought. And then she told herself, no. 

Jess remembered lying in the dark after their father’s big fight with Henry, the night Henry had said _I hate him_. She’d been furious too, but her anger was different from Henry’s. She hadn’t thought, _I hate him_. She’d thought, _it wasn’t a sacrifice._

Their father had called their mother’s death a sacrifice. A sacrifice is when you give up something you didn’t have to give up. Their mother hadn’t had the choice put to her. There was no moment where she chose between staying with her family and saving her own life. She had tried to do both. 

Now Jess thought: their mother’s death had not been a sacrifice, but perhaps their father’s death had been. He’d tried to keep them from going back under the hill. Had he known it would be too dangerous for them, that they wouldn’t be able to handle it? Had he been keeping them away from his family for the same reasons their mother had been hiding them from hers?

Jess got back up and walked down the hall, stopping outside Henry’s door. Henry had put a nameplate on it with changeable letters spelling out H. J. Cordyce. He had made it to look exactly like the one on their grandfather’s office, which read J. H. Cordyce – President. Someday, Jess supposed, it would say H. J. Cordyce – President. 

It had been foolish, she thought, trying to live on the run with that name. Everyone in the vicinity of Greenfield knew about James Henry Cordyce. Henry, she supposed, had been named when they were safe under the hill, when their mother still remembered her father fondly and wanted to give something of him to the grandson he’d never meet. As for Cordyce, their father hadn’t had any human name to give them. Work, when he could get it, was found in the sorts of places that don’t care about your name.

In the boxcar when Henry had taken off the Cordyce and been just Henry James, Jess had liked that. She’d secretly tried it on for herself. Jesse James, like the outlaw train robber. It had seemed fitting. 

She lingered outside Henry’s door for a long time, and in the end she didn’t open it. She put on her coat and went outside again, because she couldn’t stand to be in the house. This time she made for the orchard, which was in the opposite direction of the boxcar. The rose garden was Jess’s favorite place on the grounds, and their mother’s favorite place; the orchard was Henry’s. She imagined it might’ve been their father’s favorite place, too.

Henry was waiting for her there. “I expected you to come find me an hour ago,” he groused. “I’m getting cold.”

Henry was not in his coat, because he sometimes believed cold could be conquered with the power of a positive attitude. The apple trees, bare of apples, were glistening with frost. Their branches looked like a thousand knobby witch’s fingers. 

Jess took off her coat and put it around both of them. They huddled in silence.

“I don’t think she was really our grandmother, you know,” Henry said, after a time. “I think she was just a wicked thing who took advantage of Violet and Benny, and made herself an opportunity to come through.”

Jess shrugged. How would she know? She wondered if she ought to feel better about Ginseng disemboweling a wicked creature who wasn’t their Grandmother. She hadn’t felt especially badly about Ginseng disemboweling a wicked creature who was their Grandmother. She wondered how ordinary children would feel.

“I didn’t think you were really there,” she said to Henry. 

Henry said, “I didn’t know if I was, or if I’d just woken up from an awfully strange dream.”

Jess said, “Do you remember being two boys?”

Henry nodded.

“Which would you be? If you had to be one of those boys?”

Henry didn’t say anything, but his hand found hers under the coat and gripped it tight. Henry must’ve held her hand a hundred times over the years, but suddenly she felt as though it had never been held by anyone at all before, and didn’t know how to be. 

“I can’t stay here, Henry,” she said quietly. “And we can’t stay _there_. How I wish we were still in the woods with our boxcar, just us four.”

“And Ginseng,” Henry said merrily. Jess looked up at him. The witch-light was glimmering in his eyes. She supposed he _would_ think it great lark that she’d accidentally turned Benny’s toy bear into a monster. She hid a smile. 

Henry squeezed her hand. “Those two boys, you know, Jess,” he said. “They’re both the same. They’d both say the same thing.”

“And what’s that?” Jess asked

“That it’s down to you, old girl,” Henry told her softly. “You decide where home is. It’s down to you.”


End file.
